After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

Meet Phluttr - a diabolically addictive new social network and a villainess, heroine, enemy, and/or bestie to millions. Phluttr has ingested every fact and message ever sent to, from, and about her innumerable users. Her capabilities astound her makers - and they don't even know the tenth of it. But what's the purpose of this stunning creation? Is it a front for something even darker and more powerful than the NSA?

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Run Program

What's worse than a child with a magnifying glass, a garden full of ants, and a brilliant mind full of mischief? Try Al, a well-meaning but impish artificial intelligence with the mind of a six-year-old and a penchant for tantrums. Hope Takeda, a lab assistant charged with educating and socializing Al, soon discovers that day care is a lot more difficult when your kid is an evolving and easily frightened A.I.

Artemis

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.

Change Agent: A Novel

New York Times best-selling author Daniel Suarez delivers an exhilarating sci-fi thriller exploring a potential future where CRISPR genetic editing allows the human species to control evolution itself. On a crowded train platform, Interpol agent Kenneth Durand feels the sting of a needle - and his transformation begins....

Off to Be the Wizard

It's a simple story. Boy finds proof that reality is a computer program. Boy uses program to manipulate time and space. Boy gets in trouble. Boy flees back in time to Medieval England to live as a wizard while he tries to think of a way to fix things. Boy gets in more trouble. Oh, and boy meets girl at some point.

The Collapsing Empire: The Interdependency, Book 1

Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

Pilot X

Pilot X is Ambassador of the Alendans, a race with the ability to move through space and time as guardians of the timeline. Locked in ongoing conflict with the Sensaurians, an organic hive mind that can send messages in thought throughout its own history, and the Progons, a machine race who can communicate backwards in time, Pilot X finally manages to create peace among the three races.

The Punch Escrow

Joel Byram is an everyday 22nd century guy. He spends his days training artificial-intelligence engines to act more human, jamming out to 1980s new wave - an extremely obscure genre - and trying to salvage his deteriorating marriage. Joel is pretty much an everyday guy with everyday problems - until he's accidentally duplicated while teleporting. Now Joel must outsmart the shadowy organization that controls teleportation, outrun the religious sect out to destroy it, and find a way to get back to the woman he loves.

Dimension of Miracles

Dimension of Miracles is a satirical science fiction novel first published by Dell in 1968. It's about Tom Carmody, a New Yorker who, thanks to a computer error, wins the main prize in the Intergalactic Sweepstakes. Tom claims his prize before the error is discovered and is allowed to keep it. However, since Tom is a human from Earth without galactic status and no space traveling experience, he has no homing instinct that can guide him back to Earth once his odyssey begins - and the galactic lottery organizers cannot transport him home.

Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1

The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the Native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon came ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There went the good old days, when humans got killed only by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved.

Follow the Geeks: 10 Digital Innovators and the Future of Work

Follow the Geeks tells the stories of 10 digital entrepreneurs who transformed their careers for the 21st century. See the risks, setbacks, and innovations that defined them. You'll find programmers and photographers, podcasters and philanthropists. No matter what industry you work in, what size your company is, or if you're launching your own startup, these stories provide a trail of wisdom for the future.

Ascend Online: Ascend Online, Book 1

Diving into a revolutionary new video game, Marcus and his friends escape a stagnant society, entering into a world that defies their wildest imaginations. But from the moment that he logs in, Marcus finds himself separated from his friends and thrown into a remote village under attack by a horde of goblins. Forced into battle, Marcus rallies the beleaguered villagers and, with their help, manages to drive off the invading creatures. With the village in ruins and their supplies spoiled, the villagers turn to Marcus for help in rebuilding the village.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the facts that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces; (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations; and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

The Book of Ralph

A message appears on the moon. It is legible from Earth, and almost no one knows how it was created. Markus West leads the government's investigation to find the creator. The message is simple and familiar. But those three words, written in blazing crimson letters on the lunar surface, will foster the strangest revolution humankind has ever endured and make Markus West wish he was never involved.

Aurora: CV-01: Frontiers Saga, Book 1

world recovering from a devastating plague. A brutal enemy threatening invasion. A young man seeking to escape the shadow of his father. A ship manned by a crew of fresh academy graduates. A top-secret experimental propulsion system. A questionable alliance with a mysterious green-eyed woman. What destiny has in store for the crew of the UES Aurora is far greater than any of them could ever imagine. And this is only the beginning....

Earthcore

EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources, and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure. But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting...and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

A Swift Kick in the Asteroids

Neurotic tech Zagarat Cole had no choice but to steal 432,985 credits from the Deus Syndicate. It was the only way to pay for his mother's medical treatments. So, when a Deus executive called Zag into his office, he knew the jig was up. Or down. Or however it was you danced a jig. Yet to Zag's astonishment, the executive didn't excoriate, eviscerate, or "ate" him at all. He offered him a job.

Where the Hell is Tesla?: A Novel

I found the journal at work. Well, I don't know if you'd call it work, but that's where I found it. It's the lost journal of Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors and visionaries ever. Before he died in 1943, he kept a notebook filled with spectacular claims and outrageous plans.

That Is All

John Hodgman completes his vision with That Is All, the last book in a trilogy of Complete World Knowledge. Like its predecessors, That Is All compiles incredibly handy made-up facts into brief articles, overlong lists, and beguiling narratives on new and familiar themes. It picks up exactly where More Information left off - specifically, at page 596 - and finally completes Complete World Knowledge, just in time for the return of Quetzalcoatl and the end of human history in 2012.

Awaken Online: Catharsis

Jason logs into Awaken Online fed-up with reality. He's in desperate need of an escape, and this game is his ticket to finally feeling the type of power and freedom that are so sorely lacking in his real life. Awaken Online is a brand new virtual reality game that just hit the market, promising an unprecedented level of immersion. Yet Jason quickly finds himself pushed down a path he didn't expect. In this game, he isn't the hero. There are no damsels to save. There are no bad guys to vanquish.

The Kasari Nexus: Rho Agenda Assimilation, Book 1

Jennifer Smythe escapes Earth's invasion by the insidious Kasari race, hijacks an alien starship, and survives the deadly passage through a wormhole. But escape is short-lived.... When Jennifer emerges on the new world of Scion, she is confronted by the same deadly enemy. Now the Kasari have sided with the planet's angel-like elite against the warrior underclass, but with the intent of ultimately ruling both.

Publisher's Summary

An alien advance party was suddenly nosing around my planet.

Worse, they were lawyering up....

In the hilarious tradition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Rob Reid takes you on a headlong journey through the outer reaches of the universe - and the inner workings of our absurdly dysfunctional music industry.

Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it's a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news.

The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity's music ever since "Year Zero" (1977 to us), when American pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything - and the aliens are not amused.

Nick Carter has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly, and he's an unlikely galaxy-hopping hero: He's scared of heights. He's also about to be fired. And he happens to have the same name as a Backstreet Boy. But he does know a thing or two about copyright law. And he's packing a couple of other pencil-pushing superpowers that could come in handy.

Soon he's on the run from a sinister parrot and a highly combustible vacuum cleaner. With Carly and Frampton as his guides, Nick now has 48 hours to save humanity, while hopefully wowing the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.

What the Critics Say

"Can you imagine The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy combined with The Social Network? Of course you cannot: because only Rob Reid can. Hilarious, provocative, and supersmart, Year Zero is not merely the first IPSF (intellectual property SF) epic ever written, it is also a plain brilliant novel to be enjoyed in perpetuity, in the known universe and all unknown universes yet to be discovered." (John Hodgman, resident expert, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart)

"Year Zero is a brilliant satire of the American entertainment industry, and I never stopped grinning." (Kevin Hearne, author of The Iron Druid Chronicles)

"This book is already required reading on all of the educated planets in the universe, and now they're letting us Earthlings have a look at it, too. There are at least 3.6 good jokes and 9.7 clever ideas per page. I did the math: that's a really impressive ratio. I never thought I would say this, but this book made me laugh out loud and taught me stuff about copyright infringement. Clever, smart, and so original that people are probably already trying to rip it off. (Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)

The story behind Year Zero is summarized in the writeup, and in many of the other reviews.Folks have thrown around comparisons to Douglas Adams, and while I can understand the impulse, I think they do come at SF from different comedic angles.

Hitchhiker's Guide and company have much more of an absurdist bent - the plot will often bend in service to the joke that Adams is trying to reach. Reid has an outlandish premise, and the comedy results from taking this premise and following it all the way through to the furthest logical (illogical?) extremes. I enjoy both approaches, and while I love and revere Adam's stuff, I think I find Reid's take a more satisfying as a reader.

Or as a listener.

Hodgman's performance on this audiobook is an absolute delight.I have heard him in interviews, on The Daily Show, on his podcast Judge John Hodgman, in ads, and as an occasional actor. I am an absolute fan, but he seems to keep winding up in roles where he is performing variations on insane-intellectual-lecturer-mad-professor-on-downers-with-an-ironic-twist. (Probably not the most concise description, but I hope the point comes across. Let me state unequivocally, that I am a big fan of his. ) In Year One, he showed more range in the first two hours of the narration than I have seen from him elsewhere.

In many audiobooks, narrators will sometimes lose me in a round of dialogue - they may not make each character distinctive enough to understand who exactly is speaking at any given moment. This was never a problem in this reading, and some of the voices that Hodgman came up with were downright suprising. (I actually checked again on Audible to make sure he was the only narrator listed, they were that different from his normal tone.)He makes each voice distinctive, but does not lapse in to cartoony or schlocky impressions (something I struggle with when reading stories to my kids at night). His own voice - insane-intellectual-lecturer-mad-professor-on-downers-with-an-ironic-twist is absolutely perfect for the narrator, Nick Carter.

If the premise even mildly intrigues you, or if you are a fan of Hodgman in other media, please give this a try. I loved it.

I've been listening to a lot of Scalzi's stuff: Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts, etc... and I was always left feeling that the writing and dialog never quite met the expectation set by the premises of the stories.

With Year Zero, I found the opposite. This book is frequently funny, and John Hodgman is the perfect narrator for the wit and satire. On the other hand, the premise of the book is so lightweight that it doesn't warrant a novel-length exploration.

I'd recommend this book to fans of Scalzi, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye open for more literature from Rob Reid.

I wish people wouldn't compare new authors to epic writers like Douglas Adams or Steig Larsson. It just sets them up for failure and disappoints readers. While this is a funny book about aliens, that's where the comparison to Douglas Adams stops. Rob Reid may have been influenced by reading Hitchhiker's, but he may have also enjoyed a book or two by Christopher Moore, or any number of other humorous writers. If you choose to listen to this book, listen to it for its' own value and not because you liked some other book that came before it.

That being said, here's what I thought of Year Zero:

It started out a little slow for me. I had a hard time getting into the characters and the story line. But once I got the hang of it, I found it to be packed with little quips and references to everything nerdy that I love. From the video game Portal to Microsoft Windows. It's not the kind of book where I laughed out loud in random public places while listening with my earphones, but I did chuckle quite a few times, and thought to myself, wow, he really just said that!

The narrator was perfect for this part. Not too over the top, and not so middle of the road that he made the funny bits boring. He did a great job with all the voices.

If you are a nerd, geek or gamer (or have a partner that is) you will love this book.

Just good Book could not put it down. Brilliant and Funny. It reads a bit John Scalzi book but a bit more over the top. I do agree with some that it drags on for a few short chapters towards the back end of the book and those chapters are a bit superfluous. But no book is perfect and this is as close as you can get.

This book is what you would get if you got Douglas Addams, Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow to write a book together. It is a short but fun book to read, it has good characters, a decent plot and a solid ending. It moves right along and did make me laugh out loud a few times.

What about John Hodgman’s performance did you like?

Once I found out that John Hodgman did the reading for the audio book there was no way I was going to bother with the print edition. He is the perfect voice for this book, now I wish he'd go and do the audio editions for the Hitchiker's Guide series.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Hope they didn't spend too much on the FX

Any additional comments?

I would only recommend this book to a few people. If you are an avid reader of Boing Boing then this book is for you, otherwise move on.

<br/><br/><br/>Year Zero's summary may sound a bit far fetched but it's completely plausible. The Universe's financial structure is in perial because of America's asinine copyright laws. The only way to solve the issue is to try to negotiate the rights to every song created..... So, destruction of earth it is. Actually, most of the aliens are so smitten with our music that they would never wish Earth any harm, but one group wishes otherwise. <br/><br/>This is one of those books that you will tell everyone about and buy for your closest friends. It's edge of your seat funny and a one sitting kinda read. My recommendation is buy as soon as possible. Unless you work for a record label or congress, you probably wouldn't get it anyways.<br/><br/>People who will like this book may include: nerds, geeks, and music lovers. I don't want to put Rob in the same class as Douglas Adam's its not fair to Rob. It's like going to see a movie that everyone tells you is best ever and when it doesn't completely blow your mind your let down. This book is an instant favorite for me and there will be a hardback edition on my shelf. I just don't want you to go into it expecting the universe..

Delightful tale of copyright gone wrong. Pleasurable story with some real context that should get you to start thinking why we have such ridiculous copyright laws. Also, consider that the vast world of the universe would owe so much, and be willing to function under Earth's messed up intellectual property laws. Truly fiction that we can only hope will be copied in real life!

Ried uses fiction very well to make his points. Hodgman is flawless with his performance of Reid's first work of fiction. Looking forward to more from this pair,

John Hodgman is delightful as the nebbishy hero of this adventure. He has to prove himself in unexpected ways. The ending has a great twist explaining why our civilization is the way it is (tongue in cheek, of course.)

Would you consider the audio edition of Year Zero to be better than the print version?

I've never read the print version so can't compare. Generally I try not to overlap between print, eBook and audio book.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

For shame Audible!! As River Song would say, "Spoilers!!" :-)

What does John Hodgman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His delivery. I think most people are familiar with him as PC, from the old Mac vs PC commercials. He's funny when he's supposed to be the front man, and that humorous inflection in his voice makes it a lot easier to listen to, than having to make it up in your mind.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The first time in the underground train station, when they mob the Earth girl.

The premise is poor, delivery is below standard and I have only just made it to the end of the first chapter.

What will your next listen be?

Still thinking about it

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of John Hodgman?

Not sure the book is worth it

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Extreme disappointment

Any additional comments?

Sad

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

lyn Alton

1/31/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"took time to get into but once there great"

I took time to get into it but loved the concept. funny clever concept. recommend it

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Paul

United Kingdom

9/28/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"Amazingly funny"

Would you listen to Year Zero again? Why?

Absolutely, it packed a lot into a relatively short story and kept me laughing with every paragraph.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Nick Carter, the main character because he was so level headed and reasonable without ever being dull.

Which character – as performed by John Hodgman – was your favourite?

Trudy, he managed to play such a curt and brusque character so well.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me laugh out loud on the train for a whole week.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Vincent

12/24/12

Overall

"This will go out of date very quickly."

This book was fairly humorous, an interesting tweak on the digital aspect of DNA and the so called 'junk genes'. In real life someone has taken the genome of a living cell and converted it into digital code, altered it using a computer to recreate a new bacteria that replicates, which has 'www url addresses' encoded in it too. The problem I had with the book is the story is too trite. The title is wrong, it should have at least have been Years Zero, but we never speak about month, day and year in the same terms as we speak of hours, minutes and seconds.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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